Beginning at the beginning

[moritheil]

I'm totally with PC and KM here. I always try to resolve something every game session. It doesn't have to be the big story arc, but it needs to be something substantial, like catching a villain (even if he's only #12 in the command chain), or discovering a map with a secret entrance to the palace, or finding a letter from the king to his mistress that no one knows about, or something.

Resolving something every session goes a long way toward making the PCs feel like heroes. There's also something to be said for a single session experience vs. an extended one (Poe talked about this when he wrote about short stories and poems vs. novels; there's something perfect about finishing in one session).

The thing is, I'm doing just that - it was a couple fights and then they'd find the kidnappers. Only, one of my players lost patience after two fights and wanted out. It can't get any shorter and still be a nuanced story!

I don't have a session-by-session break. It's PBP, as I stated. It has taken a couple of weeks, but there were delays due to the site going down and a few instances where players were slow to post, and I don't think that has anything to do with my DM style. If I've missed something I could have done, please tell me.

Also, like PC says, character actions need to have consequences. Don't feel like you've plotted everything out - or need to plot everything out - before the session.

I don't plot everything out. That's not what the problem is. I have been DMming for over a decade and do not have any trouble adjusting on the fly - in fact my last major campaign of this type was a simulated world with no overarching plot at all. What I can't do, however, is read the minds of my players. I don't know what to do when a player says that the features of the game as I have listed them are all okay with him, and then he wants out because it isn't what he thought it would be.

This is abrupt, too; one week he was posting with giddy anticipation and the next week he suddenly said, "This style isn't working for me, sorry, I'm out."

Another rule that comes to mind after reading your post. You say you don't want to throw players into the overarching story right off the bat. I say, do it. The rule is: use the good stuff first. Always lead with your best stuff.

But this directly contradicts your statement that I should give them something that can be resolved in one session. If they can't wait for four straightforward 2-round fights - which I would think would be the equivalent of one session - how on earth can they be expected to put up with all the geopolitical nuances of the actual story?

 

[moritheil]

I don't know your specific game, so I don't know what else it could be, but it could be this. Like Piratecat sagely observed, PC's want to feel like heroes, so giving them two fights that don't seem to resolve anything right off the bat starts them off feeling like the DM led them to a dead end, and that their future will just be full of dead ends.

I know you don't necessarily want to click on the link I provided (in the sig, again, The City Arcana) and read through pages of text to get a grasp of what's going on. But they're still in the cave! The zombies came from around the corner; I would have thought a normal response would be, "Okay, let's go check this cave out further and see it though." These aren't two disconnected fights - the party have picked up clues and they are well on their way to figuring things out. And the fights were over in 1 round and 2 rounds, respectively; they were not long fights.

Let them accomplish something, even if it's only vaguely related to the main evil you have planned out for later levels. Let them win, let them solve a problem, save a kid, or uncover a clue. The idea is a "trail of breadcrumbs" -- each clue should lead to another clue, and each little bit should, when assembled, reveal something bigger.

It's killing me that I am trying to do just this and everybody is telling me to do this.

They are investigating disappearances of women and children of low social status, which led to zombies, which will then lead them to discover an experiment, which will lead them to realize something about the game world. The point is that the city they are in is not just full of nice mages; the nasty ones are around too, and they're not above experimenting on what they see as disposable people. And they will have a lead on this faction for later political intrigue in and about the city. By shutting this down, the PCs ARE heroes, and they are also getting a feel for the world.

But the characters have been in the cave for all of two or three minutes and one of the players wants to quit! I just don't get it. I can't make it any easier or I'd just be writing the entire thing out for them and they may as well not make any decisions at all.

 

[moritheil]

I think it's important for players to regularly feel like competent heroes. It's fine for them to occasionally be short of information or resources, but for me the game shouldn't always be "figure out what the DM is thinking." Instead, it should be a collaborative process where both sides are having fun.

Okay, I'm with you there, but what do you do when the PCs don't go out to find information and resources, and you have to feed them everything? We have no bard or rogue, and they're only level 1, so it's not like I blame them. I went ahead and fed them the info they needed to find the cave they needed to go to . . . but I can't just say, "Oh, and here's the explanation for everything" at a time when they couldn't possibly have picked up all the clues. Shouldn't they work for it a bit? What I was doing was giving them gradual pieces of the puzzle, to let them know they were making progress, but despite that one player wants to quit.

I'm particularly a fan of the latter. For instance, don't have the PCs walk on stage after the bad guys' plot is in motion; instead, have something they do (beating up a local thug, killing a monster) set other plot elements in motion that they then have to deal with. It makes them feel intimately involved, instead of just a visitor, because their actions create visible change in the world.

How do you apply that to a political intrigue campaign? I mean, say they off this low-tier villain and the shadowy cabal changes its policies. When are they going to see it? Certainly not right away! How would you let them know without flat-out saying "You notice a change which is MOST CERTAINLY A RESULT OF YOUR HEROIC WORK?" I don't want to spoon-feed them everything like they're morons incapable of taking a hint. There's no point in intrigue if you're just going to lay it out. But I don't want to hide it so deep they can't find it. Is there some rule of thumb you use? And what do you do to ensure you have players who are willing to play that kind of game? All I can think of is saying "This game may contain intrigue and political maneuvering; you have been warned," at signup.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

It sounds like the lack of interest could come from the fact that there doesn't seem to be any personal stake in the matter. The political intrigue doesn't tie into the characters, any other characters are just as likely to take on the matter as them.

As such I would recommend trying to tie the characters to the plot, have them have a more personal reason to be involved. The women and children being captured have some of them know the PCs.

Or have the beginning of the adventure begin mid action, so there is momentum there at the start, like say the PCs witness a child or women being kidnapped and you let them act.

Having a personal stake in the matter means there is more reason to continue to dig and find out what is going on.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

Did you ask the player what he meant by "style" when he said this style wasn't working for him? Did he mean play-by-post?

I took a quick look through the posts. Seems like standard D&D, so I'd just chalk up the player(s) who wanted out to the usual vagaries of the internet.

regarding my earlier post, I don't see a conflict between overarching plots and resolving something every session. It's possible to break overarching plots into episodic sets. I don't think, however, that that's anything like what's going on in your PBP game. Honestly it just looks like something came up for those who wanted/needed to drop. I'd have fun running with the rest!

 

[S'mon]

This sounds like it might be a railroad problem. If the PCs want to quit in frustration and go do something else (maybe next session), can you handle that? A tight pre-plotted story may be fine if the players are enjoying it, but if they're not it becomes a dreary railroad.

I remember having trouble with a GM running a published module series in her own highly detailed world, where we felt we had to follow a preset path but couldn't work out what was going on, and we weren't sure why we were doing what we were doing.

Overall, I think the more preplotted & linear the adventure is, the simpler it needs to be, so everyone understands what they're doing and why, and can mentally buy into it.

For a complex detailed world with lots of mystery and strangeness, a sandbox approach works better. Use 'bangs' - sudden events that force a reaction, any reaction (an orc with a crossbow comes through the door) - the game then is player driven, as you follow their choices and build upon them, rather than try to keep them on your prebuilt rails.